1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to an application executing method and system, more particularly to an application executing method, system capable of automatically executing an application stored in an external storage device, and a storage medium controller and an external storage device applying the method and system thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
The growth of digital cameras, mobile phones, and MP3 players has been rapid in recent years. Consequently, the consumers' demand for storage media has increased tremendously. Since flash memories are adapted have the characteristics of non-volatile data, power saving, smaller size, and non-mechanical structure, flash memories are suitable for being used as portable storage devices. Moreover, with the development of the plug-and-play interface (i.e. the universal serial bus, USB), the portable storage devices are widely applied for storing digital contents.
In order to increase the market competitiveness of the portable storage devices sold on the market, the manufactures of the storage devices usually store applications in the portable storage devices sold on the market for the users who buy the portable storage devices to use. For instance, the manufactures develop the disk management program used on the portable storage device and pre-store the disk management program in the portable storage device. Therefore, the user can use this disk management program to manage the storage state of the portable storage device.
Currently, in order to automatically execute this kind of applications provided by the manufactures, the manufactures partition off part of the storage unit of the portable storage device as a compact disc-read only memory (CD-ROM) partition and the applications and the auto-execution file (e.g. the script file with the filename as “Autorun.inf”) are programmed into the CD-ROM partition in advance for the operating system of the computer host to automatically execute the provided applications.
However, the files in the CD-ROM partition cannot be updated. Therefore, under the circumstance that the development applications are provided to the users according to the aforementioned method, it is difficult for the user to update the provided application when the manufactures provide new editions of the provided applications. Alternatively, in the example that the user wishes the bought external storage device can automatically execute applications other than the applications provided by the manufactures, it is difficult for the aforementioned method to further program the other applications into the CD-ROM partition for the operating system of the computer host to automatically execute.
Nothing herein should be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art of any portion of the present invention. Furthermore, citation or identification of any document in this application is not an admission that such document is available as prior art to the present invention, or that any reference forms a part of the common general knowledge in the art.